


Finding Forever

by Agnes_Bean



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: F/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-07
Updated: 2011-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:44:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agnes_Bean/pseuds/Agnes_Bean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living forever isn't easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Forever

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompts: Feel, forever, immortal, warmth
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are my own. Feel free to point them out! Feeback of all sorts is appreciated.

She hadn’t really realized what it meant to be immortal. Hadn’t realized as George and Nina grew older, lines creasing their faces, the pleasant plumpness of good lives happily lived filling out their figures. Hadn’t realized even when their children grew up and then older themselves. She was distracted by the day-to-day, the routines of tea and housekeeping and being a nanny (because, as soon as it was clear the children could see her, it just felt right that she would help out how she could).

And of course, there was Mitchell. Mitchell who could touch her, if lightly, hands ghosting up her sides and through her hair, lips firm and warm when they kissed (if it wasn’t quite a living kiss it came close enough, tingling and hot and strangely dry). Mitchell, who learned to lift away the layers of gray that clung to her like a second skin, as she concentrated on her longing to reveal her body. Mitchell with fingers that explored and curled and stroked long and gentle and patient until she felt, and felt, and felt, coming with shudders that he swore charged the air around them.

Mitchell, who never changed, that boyish imp smile always wide when he took her in his arms. It was so easy not to worry that this life would never end.

It was only when Nina and George’s hair went grey and their children had children that it began to dawn on her: If she never passed on, she would watch their children’s children’s children grow old. Mostly that seemed delightful. She’d be the mother hen, filling the gap where her own children should be by helping to raise generation after generation of Sands-Pickerings. A true guardian angel.

Yes, sometimes it made her sad to contemplate all the loss that would inevitably go hand-in-hand with all that joy. But when that worried her, she’d pop to wherever Mitchell was lurking, begin to pull off her sweater, and, anyway, that was that. (And if he was at work...well, it turns out every hospital has a spare supply closet, or three).

***

Then one day she was shaking a rattle for baby Nina (named for her grandmother), humming to herself in the empty house, and suddenly the weight of how much time was left in _forever_ hit her like a sucker punch to the stomach. She gasped and stumbled, weak in the face of a terror as consuming as that she’d felt being dragged into purgatory.

That night, she left. She didn’t say goodbye, didn’t write a note. It was selfish and awful and she knew it, but she couldn’t face being there anymore, the image of countless generations unfolding before her. How could she possibly explain this goodbye? She couldn’t, so she didn’t.

Instead, she ran. And ran, and ran. Ran for months, a blur in the world, too scared to let herself think.

She only stopped when she found herself confronted by a clock she’d once seen on a postcard. Ancient and multi-faced, time and astrology overlapping in blue and orange: It stirred the memory of a trip she’d dreamed of taking. From the back of her faded memories of _alive_ she found a name: Prague. Yes, _yes_. This was a place she’d imagined she and Owen would one day reach. They hadn’t of course. But now, carried by the lightness of non-being and the burning fear of forever, she’d made it. All on her own, she’d made it. Relief flooded through her being and emerged as a smile.

She stopped running, and started seeing. First Prague. Every nook and cranny, every twisting street and hidden delight. And then — why not? — the beautiful villages out in the country, where the past seemed to come to life, where she learned to make a dancing marionette by watching an old man’s patient work. And then on, and on. To Poland, to Russia. To China. To Tibet. She took her time, because that was the one thing that didn’t matter. She learned the beauty of silence, discovered a depth of thought she didn’t know she had.

She made friends, too. Ghosts and mediums and frightened werewolves. She shared what she could, lessons in surviving being not-quite-human. In return they gave her stories and laughter, they reminded her she was real: Unseen by most, but still fully of the world. She delighted in learning the details of lives she never could have understood if she’d lived out her own.

 _Stop defining yourself by what you do for other people_. Those words would float through her head as she hiked alone along dark cold roads, and she’d laugh. _Look at me now_.

But she’d quickly drop the thought, the pang of the life she’d left behind sharp in her stomach. She could never go back to being mother hen. George and Nina would be long gone before she finished her tour of the world (because that’s what she’d determined she was on); even little Nina would be all grown up. She’d be a stranger, and anyway, clearly she couldn’t be trusted to stick around. She hated herself for disappearing, but she was sure it had been what she needed. It was a sad and freeing thought.

And Mitchell. Mitchell she missed fully in her nerves, or whatever it was she had. Missing him was a tingle in her spine, a physical part of her reality. She missed him as, on long, bored train rides, she ran her own fingers along her side, around her breasts, between her legs. She missed his smile as she wrapped herself into other arms, missed the way they’d only half touched when other ghosts thrust themselves inside her, as firm and solid as flesh. With these companions along the road, companions who fully shared her plane, she re-learned how to feel like a living human; she learned to miss the hum of death-against-death.

But missing him didn’t hurt, because she wasn’t worried. They had forever to stumble together again.

And so she wasn’t even surprised when, nearly seventy years after she first started running, she saw that smile flashing in an Irish pub. The hair was cropped and the clothes were different. He didn’t look at all the same but he was exactly himself: Still cool, still hurting, still with those eyes and that laugh. And, yeah, there it was, still the same slack jawed look when he was really, truly shocked.

She laughed as she waved for him to follow her outside.

***

She ran and he followed, until finally they reached the top of a hill, alone. She stopped and whipped around, a thousand thoughts waiting to spill out.

“I’m sor -- "

The words were cut off by the heat of his lips on hers. His arms squeezed her close and then closer still. A thrill rippled through her core as her edges blurred against his body. Hands twisted in her hair, his quiet desperate moan shot through her, from lips to toes. Her cheeks flushed.

Seventy years, and she hadn’t once felt so warm.

They lay in the grass, cool soft blades caressing naked skin. They laughed as they kissed, groaned as hands ran along backs. He dragged his tongue along her breasts and up to her neck, a cool tickle that vibrated down her spine, into her stomach. He nipped below her neck, fangs leaving sharp cool pricks that made her gasp.

She wrapped her fingers around his throbbing cock; he shuddered, biting his lip against the cold and then moaning in pleasure as she began to stroke. Her entire being hummed when his eyes rolled back in pleasure. She snaked her other hand down to the warmth between her legs, matching herself stroke for stroke until they both could feel, and feel, and feel.

***

They twined together to watch the sun go down, bursting bloody red across the sky.

“You still make the air buzz,” he murmured, tracing a lazy pattern on her shoulder.

She nodded. She could feel it, little shocks along her skin. “You still aren’t used to having a ghost touch you. You know, down... there. With the cooold.” She waved her hands in mock fear.

He looked insulted, but then laughed. “And you still can’t say ‘cock.’ I thought you’d be all worldly by now. It’s been a lifetime.” She tensed, apology on her lips. He laughed again, grabbed her hand and tangled their fingers. “I want you to tell me about it, but don’t ever say you’re sorry.”

She met his eyes, and through tears saw his pain, but behind that, understanding. After all, he looked into the face of eternity too. She nodded.

She wished she could promise she’d never run again, but she’d learned a thing or two about herself, and she didn’t want to lie. But as the sun sank below the horizon and stars began to sprinkle through the sky, she decided that was fine. They’d always have forever to find each other again.


End file.
